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The summer of our discontent – Moscow 2010
By Vlada 27 August 10
More info from a Russian tutor in London, or something that you may want to know but will not learn in your Russian course. Just what exactly happened in Moscow (and most of the European part of Russia) this summer?
I was going to write an article about Russian fairy tales in my next blog post but it has turned out this summer, yet again, that Russian reality is much more interesting than fairy tales! So I can’t help commenting on the hottest summer in Russia since records started 130 years ago…
August in Russia is a traditional time for disasters. I have no rational explanation for it, but it’s true. Abominable acts of terrorism, natural disasters, accidents on a large scale, coups d’etat – you name it, we’ve had it in August of other years. So what did this August bring us? Terrifying and devastating fires!
At the end of August Muscovites and lots of Russians living in the European part of the country breathed a huge sigh of relief. The incredible heat wave (38-40 degrees Celsius) lasting for two months has ceased. No more wet towels and sheets; smoke masks and fans.
I flew back to Moscow to see the extent of the fire damage, and to hear terrifying stories about the smog and heat. To my satisfaction, it was business as usual – I couldn’t see any signs of the ordeal Russians had been through (apart from the fact that everyone’s flats were still desperately hot – the latent heat takes weeks to dissipate).
All the same, there’s no doubt it was a full-blown ecological disaster. Here are just some of the facts.
• Without any warning from the Met office, unusual heat settled in Moscow and all the areas around it in the middle of June and lasted, without any breaks (although, mercifully, with a couple of thunderstorms) until the middle of August. Daytime temperatures reached +40 and sometimes +42 degrees Celsius.
• Forests around Moscow are rich in peat. Normally, peat should be covered with water forming a peat bog. But in some areas peat used to be mined, for fuel (instead of firewood) and for agriculture. To make peat mines, bogs were drained and later abandoned without being refilled with water. When the weather gets hot, the temperature inside a peat deposit becomes so high that peat ignites and starts burning, giving out suffocating smoke.
• Peat can burn in the ground, so there is no flame visible, and the smoke from it rises above the ground. It is very difficult to put out or control.
• Peat fires are not new to Moscow – they happen every year when the weather gets hot. This year they ran out of control because of the unusually long heat wave. In living memory, a very similar thing occurred in 1972, with smoke covering the whole city for days.
• When peat fires spread, they destroy hundreds of hectares of valuable forests, killing wildlife and people, devastating villages and crops. This is exactly what happened this year. Not only a lot of animals and birds perished, but some villages were burned to the ground leaving their inhabitants homeless. There are now campaigns in the media to help those who lost their homes and livelihoods. The government promises to build new houses for the fire victims as quickly as possible…
• The beginning of August was the worst. Thick smoke came into Moscow from the south (where there were most forest fires) turning it into a ghost city. It was impossible to see anything or to breathe properly outside. Combined with the 40 degree heat, it created a model of hell’s antechamber. People didn’t dare leave their homes, streets were empty. Ambulances were struggling to cope with the volume of calls from people with heart and breathing problems. Mortality in the city increased threefold. Morgues were full. The price of air conditioners and fans soared.
• Those who did venture out acquired a black sooty moustache under the nose after being outside for a while, and felt sick after inhaling too much carbon monoxide. The concentration of carbon monoxide in the air was 6 times higher than the acceptable level.
• An insignificant but curious fact: my family’s cat, a beautiful and treasured pet, fainted with heat stroke, to the horror of his owners, and had to be brought back to life with smelling salts and water. After that, he was sprinkled with water regularly and made to drink.
• People on the tube were seen fainting. The best places to be were big air-conditioned shopping centres and especially food shops where the staff sprinkled water around and washed everything to keep soot off the groceries.
• Some of my friends only went out at night (the fortunate ones who work as university lecturers, on a summer break with no need to go to work every day) – the best time to leave the house was at 3 am when the temperature was ‘only’ about 30 degrees.
• Everyone who could leave the city did so, going to visit relatives outside Moscow or on holiday if they were lucky enough to get a last minute holiday package.
• However, Russians are very stoical and resilient people who do not succumb to panic and fear easily (we’ve been through so much that a few puffs of smoke is not a big deal). Even on the worst days, Moscow functioned as normal: public transport ran as usual, people went to work, shops and restaurants were open and even the street vendors were out. You could get a take away if you ran out of food and were too scared to venture outside. It would be delivered with a bit of soot on top but still edible!
The question now widely discussed in the media is – why could it not be prevented or predicted? And was it the first disaster of this scale caused by global warming, or has it all happened before? The answer is – it could be prevented but wasn’t, through habitual Russian carelessness and lack of organisation. “A Russian man will not cross himself until thunder strikes”, says an old Russian proverb. We like to react to events when they have already happened, not before they are likely to happen. Why couldn’t the Met office warn us? Probably for the same reason!
And has it happened before? Yes, many times, but not as bad as this year in people’s living memory. I am just old enough to remember the summer of 1972 (very vaguely, I was a young kid), with smoke and fires all around Moscow. But here is an extract from a historical record from 1533, documented by the famous Russian historian Karamzin. “... from the 29th of June till September not a single drop of rain fell on the ground. Bogs and brooks dried up; forest fires were raging; the sun was dull and could not be seen long before the time of sunset. In broad daylight people could not even recognise each other’s faces and were suffocating from smoke. Travellers could not see their way; birds could not fly in the air…” Imagine the crop failure and the famine that must have come after that!! Sounds much more scary than the summer we’ve just had!
So if you are going to Moscow in August, check the latest news and the weather forecast. But remember, it will be business as usual as long as it is possible to breathe at all! Even your Russian course, were you to plan one, would not be cancelled…